Criticism
Nazrul's protest poetry
Kazi Nazrul Islam addressed the undying sense of self respect of the common man that persists, even as a hardly perceptible undercurrent, in the most trying of circumstances. He recognised that the weakness of the elitist centre meant a corresponding strength of the subaltern periphery, since through a series of strange binaries, the ebb and flow of the two mutually locked segments of our population shows each other's strengths and weaknesses. Nazrul believed that the more oppressive the state machinery became in colonial India, and the more supportive the native elites were towards the establishment, the more they showed their weakness. This ebbing of strength was not so much physical as it was moral: since the oppressive measures that the colonialists and their local collaborators took in silencing any dissent were repugnant and morally indefensible. Even the mighty landlords who substantially contributed towards the upkeep of the colonial machinery and were given generous favours in return often found themselves alienated from their own people. Thus, after a series of peasant uprisings had weakened the zamindars of North Bengal in the 1920s, the zamindars had to employ private security to ward off any possible attack, thus severing the last link with their people. Many chose to settle down in Calcutta and become absentee landlords. The peasants, on the other hand, although hunted down by the police, rarely left their land. Fugitives they became, but not migrants. Migration was a later phenomenon, occasioned more by economic rather than political reasons. Nazrul 'voiced' these subalterns, not through a patronising, 'speaking on their behalf' attitude, but by actually speaking with them. What he spoke was what they spoke; besides, his poems articulated what the subalterns had always spoken out, in their supposedly inarticulate and inaudible voice. There was no invention involved here, no gap between his and their voices, or any self-satisfaction that at last, the people had spoken through him. What impresses one most about the protest poems of Nazrul is the absolute honesty of his approach. Nazrul has written many protest poems which called for an end to inequality and exploitation, even exhorting the oppressed to rise up in arms against the mighty oppressors. The tone of these poems is strident and passionate, but at times pleading and logical too. He often draws upon history and social narration to build a case for the justness of the subaltern struggle. But each of his protest poems is full of an intense love and admiration for the peasants and workers. Many of his titles also give out his commitment to the marginalized and the oppressed, for example, Bidrohi (The Rebel) from Agnibina (1922), Chor-Dakat (Thieves), Barangona (The Whore), Nari (Women) and Kuli-Majur (Labourers and Workers) from Samyabadi (1925); Chashar Gaan (The Song of the Peasant) from Nirjhar (1938); Otho Re Chashi (Wake Up, O Peasant) from Natun Chand (1945) and Krishoker Gaan (The Song of the Peasant) [not published in any collection of poems]. Except for Bidrohi, however, the other poems do not foreground the element of protest: it assumes substance as the poems draw to a close. Protest in these poems implies first a rejection of the condition of poverty, neglect and servitude, and, secondly, a call to arms. In many poems, the tone is openly hostile and dismissive of authority/power: in others, Nazrul instigates the subaltern to take up arms to end exploitation. Bidrohi, perhaps the best known poem of Nazrul, and the one that instantly provided him with the eponymous title Bidrohi was written in 1921. It is a meticulously crafted poem with immaculate control of rhyme and rhythm and appears to be a more passionate version of Whitman's Song of Myself. The Bidrohi of Nazrul's poem is the eternal crusader against injustice, falsehood and oppression: he is the defender of the poor and the powerless, of the marginalized masses of rural Bengal/India. And on the level of action, the Bidrohi is a Swadeshi -- a patriot -- fighting to end the British Raj. The double meaning implied in the Bidrohi's iconoclastic pronouncement: 'I etch my footprint on the bosom of God,' could not have been lost on the authority, since Bhagaban (God) also meant the ruler of the land, an ironic term that problematised and directly questioned the legality of colonial rule. The 139-line long poem, spoken in first person by the Bidrohi, begins with the assertion of his hero-hood, and a series of impossible actions that are however quite routine for him. "I tear all bonds, all rules and regulations/I don't care for any laws," he says, since "I am Bedouin, I am Chengis/I don't bow to anyone else other than myself." The poem pulsates with the raw energy and passion of the Bidrohi. He is both an individual and the magnitude, both man and god, love and hatred, victim and victimiser, proto-subaltern and the man who will empower the subaltern. The poem Bidrohi is finally a vindication of the subaltern position, since the Bidrohi categorically says: Great war-weary rebel / I, shall be quiet that day / When the cry of the oppressed will no more resonate in the air / The oppressor's sabre will / not rattle on the fierce battlefield / War-weary rebel / I shall be quiet that day . . . The other poems mentioned above have different themes; their perspectives are also different; but these are united by a common understanding of the subaltern -- his condition, his pangs and pains, and his victimhood. The four poems from Samyabadi celebrate the four groups of subaltern: thieves and robbers, labourers and workers, prostitutes and women. Thieves and prostitutes carry with them the social taboo and a permanent seal of disapproval, while labourers and workers are condemned to a life of drudgery. It is, however, the women who are condemned to fight a protracted battle against multiple domination. If, under the British Raj, men had to contend with domination and colonisation on a social and political level, the women had to endure an equally pernicious domestic colonisation. In the protest part of Samyabadi and other poems, Nazrul wishes these various forms of domination and colonisation to go. He also categorically rejects the elite society's classification and convenient labelling of women and other outcasts and subalterns. The protest in Nazrul's poems involves a total rejection of discriminatory social and human conditions, and in offering an alternative in the form of a society based on equality, fair play and justice, where the subaltern is the arbiter of his own destiny. Voicing the subaltern, for Nazrul, was an attempt to transcend a condition of historical situatedness and claim the lost identity of the dalits (oppressed) and the marginalised. It was both a critique of the elitist idea of social progress as well as a justification for subaltern protests and uprisings to firmly establish their identity in a perpetually shifting social and political landscape.
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